The company has 4 business groups, as it calls them: enterprise; public; small and medium business; and consumer.

The small and medium sized business, or SMB, group will now be run by Steve Felice, based in Singapore, who is currently president of Dell Asia-Pacific and Japan. According to the Dell announcement: “The new organization will accelerate creation and delivery of SMB-specific solutions and technology to the more than 72 million small and medium-sized businesses worldwide.”

I suspect this global reorg suggests Dell sees more growth potential outside the U.S., and also sees opportunities to cut costs by consolidating globally. In the Q&A issued by Dell (PDF) to accompany the official announcement, they point to “faster innovation and globally standardized products and services.”

For really small businesses in the U.S., which tend to purchase consumer products onesy-twosy from Dell, this reorg makes little difference. The consumer business unit is already organized globally.

For larger small-businesses, ones that have computer networks and purchase Vostros and other lines through the SMB unit, it remains to be seen what this means in 2009. Will it mean more computer hardware innovation, or more of the same as the focus shifts internationally? If I had to guess, it means more of the status quo. The emphasis in 2009 is going to be on cost cutting more so than SMB computer innovation, I’m afraid, given the lowered earnings and lower demand for PCs (especially higher-margin PCs) due to the global recession.

There may be more emphasis on services, as it’s clear that hardware alone won’t cut it for Dell. So if there’s going to be much change, I expect it to be in the area of add-on services, such as data backup and online file storage, etc. Dell already has some service offerings — but they can do more and services may be easier to deliver quickly to market, not to mention being higher margin.

I have always been a Dell fanatic but this news is incredibly bad. But the lost market share ? That’s no wonder. Dell is far behind HP’s design and availability to other countries over the world. I think they should improve that aspect.